You have to figure out how many SATA ports and drive bays each system has. A lot of Optiplex systems only have room for just 1 or 2 drives, sometimes just 1x2.5" and 1x3.5" with no room for two 3.5" drives which isn't exactly good for hoarding.
TADataHoarder
joined 1 year ago
I'm guessing there's no SATA beneath all of this?
Correct, these are native USB drives.
You are stuck with this so you might as well put it back in the case.
Got my hands on my enclosures.
These Easystore PCBs can be placed into these MyBooks. They fit just fine.
The PCBs appear identical. The Easystore has an LED but that's just missing from the MyBook. Same board, different components, but most are the same. Even the winbond chip has identical markings but some others do not.
It's something that everyone should follow.
It is also something that everyone can absolutely afford to follow, for at least some of their data.
Take this for example.
A 5 pack of 128GB USB drives is dirt cheap.
Encrypt them all, keep two plugged into a USB hub. One in a drawer, one you keep in your car (who cares if it dies) and store another in a safe deposit box/friend's/family member's house.
If your house burns down you get to keep that 128GB of data, if you want more, pay more, but this is available for under $45 so yes everyone should do it for at least some of their data. There's no excuse.
Be extremely careful if you're going to use any service.
You need to make sure you do not hand your film over to a company that will destroy/recycle your film after their digitization. Once the film is gone, it's gone. Many companies destroy the film after scanning it and this is 100% avoidable. There are no methods of scanning that require destruction of the original film so you should never allow them to destroy or recycle your film. Besides that, many services just suck. Reviews are often useless because they're either fake or come from people who don't know the potential of their originals and are just happy to see something digital from them after their collections were collecting dust for decades.
Here's a video showing a comparison of a scanning service vs frame-by-frame RAW capture with a macro lens and DSLR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kC2hc_GzIA
When it comes to film scanning, there's always room for improvement. Even if you get an okay digitization today I would still recommend preserving the originals because better digitization services can always come to the market and potentially at a better price. The ceiling for film scanning is quite high, but the floor is full of low tier trash services. If you look closely in the video you'll see that the video he received was actually interlaced which is absolutely pathetic.
What do you recommend I do with my new photos and what's left?
Keep local backups.
Buy three hard drives.
One to serve as your main copy, and two more externals. Copy your data to the main drive then repeat that process to ensure each of your three drives has everything stored on it. Go to your safe deposit box and store one of the external hard drives there. While back at home, keep storing your photos on the main drive. Every week or so plug the external in and sync it so it is up to date. You can use something like FreeFileSync for this. In 3 to 6 months, go swap the external with the one in the safe deposit box and sync the drive when you get home. In another 3 to 6 months, go swap externals again. If you have an event where you have lots of precious media you created, consider taking a trip to the safe deposit box sooner. If you go a while without taking any good photos, you can put it off.
Your 3 children can be the biggest threat to your data depending on their age.
Hard drives are fragile and dropping them is bad. Don't give them the opportunity to knock them all over at once, and if age appropriate tell them how important it is to not drop/move/knock them over. If you have a safe at home store your external in there when not in use. If one gets damaged, you'll have two extra copies while you order a replacement.
If you don't have a lot of data (1,000 GB or more) consider using external SSDs since they are drop proof and cheap at those low capacities.
should I delete in New Hard Drive and re-transfer?
Sometimes this makes sense to do, but usually it's not ideal. Doesn't sound like deletion and copying again is the right choice for your situation IMO.
With a program like FreeFileSync you could simply compare the two directories and have it highlight any differences. If one file is missing it'll show you and let you sync the directories. If you're concerned about data integrity on the copied destination there is a content comparison mode that will verify both sides have identical bit perfect files or highlight any that have differences. There are other programs and tools to accomplish the same but FreeFileSync has an easy to use interface.
I’m assuming for the most part the internal and external drives are relatively the same for HHDs with the main difference being what it’s put in.
For the most part that is correct.
At least for desktop externals (ones with a power adapter, not portables) they're usually just standard HDDs you can shuck.
There are some weird cases like with portable externals having native USB on the HDD itself (no SATA at all) and for a while many externals were a hit or miss in terms of CMR/SMR but the same can be said about retail HDDs so that issue isn't specific to externals.
Will a 4 bay non-raid enclosure last longer or work better on average than an exclosure like for example on the WD Elements external hard drive.
4-Bay DAS boxes typically use USB3 5Gbps and the bandwidth is shared for all drives. Many don't even support UASP which reduces performance. This all results in a bottleneck when trying to transfer data around from multiple drives. Individual USB enclosures don't have this problem since each drive has its own USB3-5Gbps to SATA adapter but those cheapshit enclosures you get with WD Elements take up lots of room and let the drives get very hot (~45c idle up to 65c+ after large transfers) if your room doesn't have airflow (ceiling fan/etc, if you don't feel the air moving, the drives don't) since they have no cooling.
If you can deal with shared bandwidth (or are willing to pay extra for 10Gbps/20Gbps USB units to avoid a bottleneck) being a bottleneck then multi-bay enclosures are usually an upgrade in every other aspect.
They are more compact. 4-Bay DAS boxes are usually all smaller than 4 Elements/Easystores/MyBooks lined up.
They only require one power adapter+data cable.
Almost every DAS unit has a power button, but unfortunately not all of them have power buttons per drive which would be awesome.
Most importantly they all have fans to cool your drives.
If active cooling is the only reason you're really looking at DAS enclosures you can get that for much cheaper with a USB fan like this.
https://www.amazon.com/AC-Infinity-MULTIFAN-Receiver-Playstation/dp/B00G05A2MU/
One 120mm fan is the perfect size to cool 3 WD Externals lined up. If you've got 5+ drives then consider the dual fan model.
https://www.amazon.com/AC-Infinity-MULTIFAN-Receiver-Playstation/dp/B00JLV4BWC/
At least you can actually order them on WD's website now.
$630 ain't a fun price though but being able to put the order in is something.
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-gold-sata-hdd?sku=WD241KRYZ